


Symbol of Solidarity

by spitecentral



Series: April Autism Acceptance Fics [6]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: (but more minor), Ableism, Autism Acceptance Month 2018, Autistic Cassandra Cain, Autistic Damian Wayne, Autistic Solidarity, Damian Wayne is an Autistic Icon: The Fic, Gen, Written by an Autistic Author, how in the bloody hell do I tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-29 00:36:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14461275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecentral/pseuds/spitecentral
Summary: In which Robin becomes a symbol for Gotham's autistic community.





	Symbol of Solidarity

**Author's Note:**

> Whoooo finally finished! This was a tough bugger to write, and I'm still not sure about Damian's characterization, but it's also like... the most self indulgent fic I've ever written. But hey, that's what fanfiction is for! Enjoy!
> 
> PS this is set during the Dick!Bats area bc tbh I just like him better than Bruce and also he's (marginally) easier to write for me, and Cass is not in Hong Kong (and also still Batgirl) bc that was, as the prophets call it, 'Bad Writing'.
> 
> WARNING: this fic opens with a non-graphic attempted murder/ableist hate crime (? are we allowed to call it that?) and contains people excusing said crime. Talk of ableism and ableist talk is used throughout the fic.

It started when Robin punched a woman in the face.

“Who the _fuck_ attempts to murder their own child?” he yelled at her, his whole body shaking, fists balled in an attempt to keep himself from bloodying her nose any further. 

The mother was crying, holding a hand up to her face to stem the bleeding. “I’m sorry,” she blubbered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but she was just so difficult, I couldn’t take it anymore -”

“Difficult? _Difficult_? You attempted to gas your child, and your excuse is that she was too _difficult_?”

Robin grabbed her collar and shoved her down until she was at his eye level. The dead white lenses of the mask promised murder.

“If you weren’t prepared for a difficult child, then you shouldn't have had children in the first place,” he hissed to her.

Desperately, the woman looked over Robin’s shoulder, trying to catch Batman’s eye. But Batman was bent over her daughter, whose body was laying next to the car they’d he’d just dragged it out of, giving her mouth-to-mouth in an attempt to keep her poisoned lungs breathing. 

Robin shook her. 

“Well? No other excuse, you monster?”

From afar, ambulance sirens could be heard. Of course, you always heard them in Gotham, but in this neighborhood you rarely heard them so loud. Bystanders huddled together in a sea of white faces, looking at each other unsure, some women clutching their pearls.

One of the bystanders, a man, awkwardly squeaked “Uhm, excuse me?”, and Robin turned to him, still shaking with anger. 

“What? Any words of defense for her?” he snapped. The man flinched, but he scraped his throat and continued. 

“I, eh, feel like it should be necessary to explain what Ms. Lemaire meant by saying her daughter is ‘difficult’.”

Behind his mask, Damian narrowed his eyes. “Elaborate,” he said, voice dangerously low. 

“She has autism.” The man tripped over the word ‘autism’, like he wasn’t sure whether he should be saying it, whether it was appropriate. But it was still said, and you could see the crowd shifting uncomfortably.

Robin let the woman go. Lemaire stepped backwards, rubbing her neck, pale as a corpse. 

With broad, angry steps, Robin stomped over to the man. “What are you saying, exactly?” he hissed to him.

The man took a step backwards. “I - nothing - I just thought it was an important distinction,” he stammered, hands coming forward to shield himself. 

“Why?”

“Well, uhm, I don’t know if you’ve ever met a person with autism, but I work with them, you see? And they can be - stressful. Especially if you don’t have the right help. So while Ms. Lemaire shouldn’t have attempted to murder her, it’s understandable -”

“Understandable? Is that what you are saying? Poor Ms. Lemaire, all alone trying to care for her severely autistic kid, what a tragic, stressful fate, of course she would snap with that kind of burden on her! Is that what you’re saying?”

The man didn’t say anything, trembling in his place.

“Is that what you think of us? You think we are stressful burdens on our families, so unbearable that it is _understandable_ if they kill us?”

“Us?” Lemaire squeaked from behind him. 

The ambulance had arrived, and the blue lights of the sirens almost drowned out the ashen color on her face. 

Robin sneered. 

“I am autistic, and I am happy to know that if you were my mother, I would have been killed. And I am especially happy that all of you,” he gestured sharply towards the bystanders, “would have been able to _understand_ it.”

He stomped off, not caring to see the shocked look on any of their faces, ignoring the strangled noise coming from Lemaire’s throat.

“I’m riding in the ambulance.”

Nobody, not even Batman, dared to argue with him. 

///

The next day, his words were all over the evening news, and Gotham was in an uproar. People tried to dispute the cellphone video, but there had been more than enough witnesses at the scene to confirm it. There was no denying that Robin had openly declared himself to be autistic.

And so, other debates started up.

“I’m concerned about this child,” said a guest on CNN, an expert in autism from Harvard. “If he truly has autism, he is much more vulnerable than other children his age. I am not sure if vigilantism is right for him; what kind of guardian would let a young child with autism fight crime?”

“They had no problem with me fighting crime when I was just a young child without autism,” Damian growled, angrily eating Alfred’s chocolate chip cookies, glaring holes in the TV.

“Stupid,” Cassandra agreed, stealing Damian’s cookies.

“Hands off or I will murder you!”

“Like you could.”

///

“#imlikerobin is trending on Twitter.”

Damian looked up from his drawing, irritated, as Grayson stood in the doorway, waving his phone like an idiot. 

“What does that mean and, more importantly, why should I care?”

Richard flopped onto the bed next to him, a gigantic grin on his face as he showed Damian the tweets open on his phone and began to explain.

Apparantly, #imlikerobin was a movement started by Aziz Kavur who tweeted:

“had a fucking meltdown today whcih sucked balls but the worst was dad calling me broken again when he thought i couldn’t hear #autism #imnotbroken #imlikerobin #getoveritdad”

What followed was a storm of similar tweets, ranging from 

“Hey @CNN @Fox_News and whoever else is running those ‘poor autistic kid robin can’t fight’ stories: I’m autistic and a black belt who could kick your ass #imlikerobin”

to 

“yo I wonder what Robin’s special interest is? probs crime fighting or murder lol #imlikerobin”

“It’s animals, you buffoon,” Damian muttered, scrolling through the tweets.

Richard smirked at him. “You’re smiling.”

“I’m not!” But the corners of his mouth were curled up, and as he scrolled by a picture of a self-made bracelet with a little Robin on it, his eyes couldn’t have been brighter.

///

Afterwards, he began to notice changes.

He saved a little girl from a burning building, and she tugged on his sleeve and asked him: “Mr. Robin? Do you flap your hands when you’re happy?”

He was about to ignore her, but then he saw a little bracelet, similar to the one he’d seen on Twitter, and he answered: “No. However, I do when I’m anxious.”

As he swung away, he could see her waving excitedly from the corner of his eye.

“Is the robin bracelet a trend now?” he asked Grayson once they were back in the cave.

Richard furrowed his brows and paused while taking his cape off. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Why?”

“I saw a small child wearing one today.”

“Huh,” Richard mused, resuming his movements. “Interesting.”

They said nothing more about it, but he kept noticing the bracelets. There weren’t many, all things considered, but it was a reoccurring pattern he noticed; on the arms of autistic people, there was often a Robin.

Then he saw one on Cassandra.

“Why are you wearing that?” he hissed, grabbing her hand and inspecting the bracelet. It had a thin, silver chain, with in the middle a robin set in gems. 

“Why not?”

He glared at her, and she stared back, unmoved. Reluctantly, he let her wrist go.

“Could you _please_ explain to me why you’re wearing that?” he asked through gritted teeth. Cassandra smirked at him and nodded, acknowledging his efforts. 

“You haven’t noticed?”

“Haven’t noticed what?”

“Robin is the new... symbol for autism. In Gotham.”

Damian furrowed his brow. “Did we have one before?”

Cassandra shrugged. “Kind of. Puzzle piece.”

“Nobody liked that.”

“Infinity symbol.”

Damian grunted and flopped on the couch. “And why did nobody alert me of this?”

“Assumed you knew.”

He glared at her. She just raised an eyebrow.

“Are you... unhappy?”

He sighed and stared at the ceiling.

“I think people are idiots to latch on to the first important person to openly declare that he has autism,” he announced.

“While saving an autistic girl from death. And punching her abuser.”

“...and while deliberately making myself a symbol by dressing up in frivolous colors and fighting crime.”

“That’s Robin.”

Damian groaned. Cassandra observed him, head tilted just the slightest bit.

“You like it.”

He burrowed his hand in his face. “It’s idiotic,” he said. “But I think I do. And I hate it.”

Suddenly, Cassandra grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him off the couch. 

“What are you doing?”

Cassandra glowed, a bright smile on her face. “Buying you a bracelet.”

“I’m not buying a bracelet!”

///

At the next gala, Cassandra Wayne and Damian Al Ghul-Wayne showed up with matching robin bracelets. The media had a field day.

“How long do you think it will take before the Gotham Gazette asks for an interview?” Damian asked, biting off a piece of his waffle while reading the paper.

“Nine minutes,” Cassandra answered, trying to steal a waffle off his plate.

“You have your own!”

“Actually,” Richard interjected. “I’ve had seven requests already, and you two are answering at least one.”

Cassandra looked up in alarm. “Even me?”

“Yes. You shouldn’t have run off during patrol yesterday.”

She glared at Richard, and Damian smirked, poking her with his fork. “Suffer with me.”

She lunged over the table, grabbing a waffle on the go, and Damian shrieked and tried to stab her with his fork. 

“No killing each other,” Richard said calmly, taking a sip from his coffee, with Damian yelling obscenities at Cassandra while he was flipped on the ground in the background.

Their bracelets reflected the morning light, and they were smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so for the record I don't think this is actually an accurate representation of how people would react if Robin actually did this, largely bc autism pride is still a very new concept, even in the autism community, and I doubt people would start wearing autistic symbols en masse, and I think it's even less likely that people outside the community would start recognizing it. But fuck you, this is my fic I do what I want and I want to dream about solidarity.
> 
> EDIT: changed Damian's dialogue a bit to sound more sophisticated because I just plain wasn't happy with it and it kept bugging me. Nothing has changed, except the words are a bit longe and/or dramatic.


End file.
